A study published in Cancer examined early-onset colorectal cancer finding unique subgroups among CRC patients, Medscape reports.
What you should know:
1. Researchers conducted a retrospective review of more than 36,000 patients from four unique cohorts.
2. Physicians must give special consideration to CRC patients between 18- and 29-years, and to patients with predisposing medical conditions, researchers found.
3. Early-onset CRC is more often found in the rectrum and the descending colon, and Hispanic patients are more likely to develop it.
4. Early-onset CRC is also more likely found in patients without a family history.
5. When researchers compared early-onset CRC patients to patients older than 50 years, the early-onset patients were more likely to have synchronous metastatic disease, microsatellite instability and distal primary tumors.
6. Researchers said, "All things considered, early-onset CRC…has distinct clinical and molecular features, and it may be more appropriate to consider age as a continuum when one is evaluating CRC. [Further] evaluation of the subgroups among these patients is important."
Read the entire study, here.